


Please accept this, the only intimation

by okapi



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fem!John - Freeform, Femlock, Friends to Lovers, Gender or Sex Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-17 23:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14840963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: On a dark and stormy night, John's choice of literature sparks a revelation.Fem!Johnlock. Domestic fluff. Friends to lovers. Inspired by Agatha Christie'sA Murder is Announced.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title is from Agatha Christie's _A Murder is Announced_ , specifically the announcement of the murder: _A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation._

“Ha!” cried John as she bounded up the stairs, reaching the top just as the first _tap-tap-tap_ of rain struck the window. “I beat the storm!” She raised her hands, laden with shopping bags, in triumph.

“Congratulations.”

“What are you doing, Sherlock?” John peered over her flatmate’s shoulder. Sherlock’s laptop was open, and the surface of the desk was completely obscured by unrolled papers. “Maps. More maps.”

“How observant, John, yes. Cold case.”

“Hmm. Military movements?”

“During the war.”

“Huh.” John squinted. “Uh, which war, Sherlock?”

“Crimea.”

“My, you do like your cold cases mummified, don’t you?” John mused as she cast a glance at the rain-splattered pane. “Should be ‘a dark and stormy night.’”

“What did you get me?” called Sherlock as John headed toward the kitchen.

“Who says I got you anything?”

Sherlock huffed and nodded to the antique fixture on the mantelpiece. “Barometer.”

* * *

John’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” She crossed her arms over her chest, leaned back on her heels and motioned for Sherlock to continue. “Okay. Do tell.”

“As the mercury drops, your ability to control your impulses declines. You’re more likely to buy,” Sherlock’s gaze fixed on the bags now resting on the table, “fancy tea…which means, oh, yes, fancy tea biscuits!”

John grinned, then tossed the box of biscuits to Sherlock. “You and your barometer.”

“One for now, one for later?” said Sherlock hopefully as John pulled a second box of biscuits from the bag.

“One for you, one for me,” said John firmly.

“Nonsense. You’d hardly prefer biscuits when you could have a nice fry-up.”

“Fat chance of that. We haven’t anything in.”

Sherlock inclined her head, then, without reply, turned back to her laptop and maps.

John stared at Sherlock with a single eyebrow raised. Then she spun ‘round and waltzed to the refrigerator.

“Holy Mary!” she exclaimed when she opened the door and peered inside. “Eggs and milk and jam and…” She hurried to the bread bin. “There’s bread! There’s even a pair of wee tomatoes! Have you gone mad, Sherlock? I’m a doctor! How did I miss the signs?”

“Hilarious,” Sherlock said dryly. “I do know how to purchase comestibles, John.”

John laughed, then hummed. “Oh, really? Uh, I’m not detective, but Mister Hudson…”

“…is a very kind man,” admitted Sherlock, looking intently at the layers of maps.

“Huh. But why, Sherlock? I mean, it’s a bit unusual for you, even if it was nothing more than bending our landlord to your will and providing him with sufficient funds for the additions to his shopping list.”

“Must I have a reason? Maybe, like you, I was feeling the effects of the barometer.”

* * *

“All praise the falling mercury! Tonight, we feast!”

“Just tea for me, thanks,” said Sherlock. “And, of course,” she held up the biscuits, “thank you.”

“As you wish, but just wait until you try this new tea. It’s called Marco Polo. Chinese and Tibetan flowers.” John opened the shiny black tin and carried it to Sherlock’s side.

Sherlock leaned in and sniffed.

“Smells nice, eh?” said John. “Silk Road, ‘I met a traveler from an antique land,’ etcetera, etcetera.”

“John.”

“What?”

“They always _smell_ nice. Then you make a pot, you hate it, and it’s condemned to the tannin graveyard of the top cupboard with its predecessors. Then you make yourself a Builder’s. Like always.”

“Not always!” protested John. “How about…? Oh. Uh. But this time might be different!”

Sherlock shot her a look.

John shrugged. “It might be. I’m sophisticated, Sherlock.”

Sherlock shot her a second look.

John grunted then returning the tin to the table, she reached for the other bag. “Right here, I’ve got the perfect companion, present company excluded, of course, for an evening of a hearty supper while the elements rage without. Very, very used, of course, but also very, very cheap. And I’m not one to judge a book by its lack of cover.”

John turned and just caught Sherlock’s expression.

From alarm to blank.


	2. Chapter 2

John quickly turned back and began to fuss with the tea. That was the wonderful thing about tea, you could potter about with it while you worked something out.

John’s hands moved mechanically while she spoke aloud to herself.

“You can’t go wrong with Miss Marple, of course, but that’s the second copy of that book I have bought. When did I lose the first one? I must have been months ago. We were snowed in for a couple of days. February, yes, early February. I got almost to the end, then put the book down, and then it disappeared. Then there was that case, the one about Vamberry the wine merchant, and I forgot all about the book. I’ve never found it, but I never actually finished it, either. Do you know what happened to it, Sherlock, that other copy of _A Murder is Announced_?”

“No clue, John. Anything could have happened to it. You’re very careless with your things.”

That was a lie, and a bold one.

John had so few things it was almost impossible to be careless with them. A spartan wardrobe. Half a dozen old medical texts. A small box of photographs and mementos. A gun.

John was left to one conclusion, one highly improbable conclusion.

Sherlock had taken the book.

_Sherlock had taken the book._

* * *

 

Why would Sherlock take, and presumably bin, John’s book? It was a second-hand book; John bought no other kind. It was of absolutely no value.

John could not imagine Sherlock being interested in the book, that is, in reading it. Sherlock was a detective, the world’s only consulting detective, in fact; she didn’t read detective stories in her leisure. When life so often imitated art, John could understand, that sort of literature didn’t appeal. Sherlock did read John’s blog, but that was only to critique John’s write-ups of the cases rather severely and play the troll when she was bored.

If Sherlock had damaged the book, in an experiment gone awry, for example, she would have said something. Or John would’ve known, by the arrival of the fire brigade or a hike in month’s rent for damages. And what’s more, if Sherlock had damaged the book, she would have more than likely replaced it. She eccentric, but she wasn’t mean. Not like that, anyway.

John and the tea steeped, but she could make no sense of the matter. Finally, she said, somewhat feebly,

“If you wanted to read the book, Sherlock, you could’ve asked. I would have let you borrow it.”

“I didn’t _want_ to read it, but I did read it,” said Sherlock with more than a touch of bitterness.

* * *

Well, that was one mystery solved.

John was a bit at a loss, but then there was tea, blessed tea.

She poured two cups.

“I don’t understand, Sherlock.”

John’s voice, and the way she set cup and saucer atop Sherlock’s maps, were gentle.

If Sherlock didn’t want to explain, John wouldn’t press. After all, there was no harm done. Nevertheless, John wanted to know why. She sensed that the answer was significant. She returned to her own cup, sipped and waited.

Just as John was about to admit defeat and get on with her supper, Sherlock spoke, her tone as low as John’s had been, but far more matter-of-fact.

“It upset you, that book. You put it down. You walked away from it. At the very end! Who abandons an Agatha Christie novel before they’ve discovered who the murderer is? Not you! Not even when you’ve read it a dozen times. That dog-eared copy of _A Caribbean Mystery_ , for example. You read it over and over, start to finish, even though you know exactly who did it and why.” Sherlock huffed and rolled her eyes in abject exasperation.

“I do like that one,” admitted John.

“Exactly. But you put _that_ book down and walked away from it. When it’s occurring under my own roof, I am most intrigued by aberrant behaviour.”

* * *

“And?” asked John, smiling at the turn of the events. “Did you solve the mystery of the odd-acting flatmate?”

“Of course, I did,” replied Sherlock quickly. “I solved your mystery and Miss Marple’s. Then I binned the bloody book and found us a case, forthwith.”

John was certain that Sherlock was speaking the truth, as far as it went, but there was a part of the story that was missing.

“Sherlock, you must forgive me, but I still don’t understand. You don’t usually meddle about with my things.”

“What a tender world that would be,” muttered Sherlock, giving John’s oatmeal-coloured jumper a pitying glance.

John glared at Sherlock but continued. “I’m having a rather difficult time imaging you a domestic Savonarola, getting rid of a book simply because you think it isn’t good for me.”

Be that as it was, John had an even more difficult time with what happened next.

Sherlock harrumphed.

Harrumphed like a bloody Dickens character!

John’s shoulders rose and fell as if to laugh, but sensing it wasn’t the right thing, she stifled the noise.

She set down her cup quietly in its saucer, took up the book, and began flipping through the pages.

She skimmed the first chapters, re-familiarising herself with the plot and characters.

The clue to Sherlock’s behaviour must be in her own behavior.


	3. Chapter 3

As John leafed through the book, she began to remember her original reactions to the story. Finally, she set the book down and turned towards Sherlock, who was still seated at the desk, making short work of the tea biscuits.

“I was a bit upset when Dora Bunner was murdered,” said John. “She was the second victim, the sweet but stupid old school chum companion to Letitia Blacklock, the lady who was the intended victim of the first murder, that is, the murder that was announced in the local paper. Dora was poor, bumbling, garrulous, always failing to be helpful, but nevertheless devoted to her friend Letitia.”

Sherlock glanced at John but said nothing. John continued.

“And I put it down after Miss Amy Murgatroyd was murdered. That’d be the third murder. Murgatroyd was the sweet, stupid half of a pair of spinsters who lived together on a farm, the other half being the sturdy, weather-beaten, no-nonsense Hinchcliffe. She and Hinche were reenacting the scene of first crime in the hopes of discovering something the police hadn’t. Murgatroyd did remember something important, but Hinche was called away for some reason, and when Hinche returned, someone had strangled Murgatroyd.”

John turned away and said quietly, “I suppose it cut too close to home: the stupid companion being murdered. It’s very silly but…”

* * *

“It’s quite extraordinary, John, how susceptible you are to literature sometimes,” observed Sherlock. “Especially when, at other times, you are so very impervious to reality.”

Anger rose sharply in John. She was just about to ask Sherlock what the hell she was getting at with that last bit when she caught sight of Sherlock’s face, which bore a sort of melancholy expression that John would never in a million years have associated with her flatmate.

John’s retort died unspoken in her chest.

It appeared that Sherlock had been speaking to herself with her last statement. And despairing of something.

John didn’t know what to say.

But then Sherlock whispered, so softly that had there been any other sounds in the flat, save two sets of quiet breathing and rain on the window pane, John mightn’t have heard it.

“You aren’t the stupid companion, John.”

“Of course, I am,” replied John quickly. “You tell me so at least, gosh, twice a week.”

Sherlock coughed. “Well, be that as it may, even at your most stupid, you’re not quite as stupid as Dora Bunner. I mean, really.”

John smiled ruefully.

“And as far as the other,” continued Sherlock. “Of the two of us spinsters, you are, of course, the more stupid one...”

John gave a wry snort.

“…but you’re also the more butch.”

* * *

John laughed. It was not what she had expected to hear from Sherlock’s lips.

John’s tea was getting cold, but she didn’t care. It was horrid. Not horrid, really, just not for her. It was like perfume or candles or those bath bombs that everyone was crazy about. But Sherlock seemed to like it. Maybe Sherlock would finish the pot and when she wasn’t looking, John would dump hers down the sink and make herself a Builder’s.

But back to Sherlock.

John crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not usually one to peddle in stereotypes, Sherlock, but if you mean that I’m the one with the short hair…”

“…the more,” Sherlock grimaced, “masculine, if the word might be used as synonym for ‘hideous,’ wardrobe, the coarser vocabulary…”

“…I suppose the nickname is rather, but you’ll never convince me that Sherlock is a girl’s name…” interjected John.

“…and like Hinche, you’re the one most interested in a stiff drink,” went on Sherlock. “Also, the one most likely to care about Irish setters.”

“But wait a minute, if I am both of the spinsters,” mused John. “That leaves you out of the story altogether, Sherlock.”

“Hardly. I’m the sleuth. I’m Miss Marple.”

John reeled, quite happily knocking over her tea. Watching the fragrant liquid puddle on the floor, she cried, “What blasphemy!”

* * *

Once John mopped up the spill, she launched into a grand tirade, the likes of which she rarely indulged  because, admittedly, her opinions were few, but of this, she was as certain as the newly-converted.

“You are not Miss Marple, Sherlock! You will never be Miss Marple! If we somehow manage to live to be as old as Miss Marple and if your damned,” John snapped both her fingers several times, “rubs off on me, and we settle down in some St. Mary Mead somewhere, perhaps _I_ could be Miss Marple, figure out what happened to Mrs. Carruthers’ two gills of pickled shrimps and the like, but you aren’t _kind_ enough to be Miss Marple, Sherlock. She’s a _kind_ old lady, not just an intelligent one.”

Sherlock looked affronted, then went on the defense.

“You’re right, John, I am not Miss Marple. I am a million times _better_ than Miss Marple. I would’ve figured out the whole business by the end of chapter thirteen, and Dora Bunner _and_ Murgatroyd would’ve been spared, at least from this murderer. Really, it was positively criminal how long it took her and the police to arrive at the truth. Amateurs!” Sherlock spat the last.

Their eyes locked. Their chests heaved.

There seemed nothing more but say, but then Sherlock added, apropos of absolutely nothing,

“Bees.”


	4. Chapter 4

John stared blankly, then blinked.

“Bees?” she echoed, frowning.

“Bees,” repeated Sherlock. “Not hens or ducks or pigs or Irish setters. I want keep bees when I retire, specifically, in Sussex. I’ve my eye on a cottage on the southern slope of the downs.”

“Good Lord, you’re serious,” said John.

Sherlock huffed and bent over her maps.

John watched her for a few minutes, then asked,

“Well, does there happen to be room for a sweet, stout, bumbling companion in this cottage of yours?”

“You’re not sweet, John.”

“I _am_ sweet!” insisted John, wincing at her ability to be drawn from the point so easily as well as her whining tone.

“You are _kind_ , not sweet, there’s a difference, but yes, the cottage does have two bedrooms…”

Sherlock straightened and turned her head. Their eyes met.

The ‘if we’ll be needing two’ hung in the air between them.

No, it did not hang. It shot. Like an arrow, the unspoken phrase struck John between the eyes and stunned her.

Her first thought, when thought resumed, was of the novel and the announcement in the local newspaper which had started the whole sequence of events.

_A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation._

Bother.

* * *

That last line.

_Friends please accept this, the only intimation._

This was the only intimation that John’d had of Sherlock’s interest in her, or anyone, for that matter. The first day that John and Sherlock had met, no, the second day they’d met, Sherlock had said relationships weren’t her area, and that was that. John took people at their word and didn’t go around wishing they were other than what they said they were. John could admire a work of art without lamenting the fact that she couldn’t take it to bed. And Sherlock Holmes, inside and out, was a work of art.

But John didn’t know what to say. It was so strange. One minute, she had been talking about an Agatha Christie story and the next minute she and Sherlock had decided to retire to Sussex together and keep bees. As lovers!

John hadn’t misunderstood the last. Of that, she was certain.

She was all for it, naturally; it had just taken her by surprise. And life wasn’t like the films where one said, ‘I love you’ and the other said, ‘I love you, too,’ and then there was a kiss and that was the end of it. Or like the other films where you slammed into each other and figured out the rest of it in bed.

* * *

John might have turned the matter over in her head for quite a while if it hadn’t been obvious, even to someone as unobservant as John, that Sherlock was waiting for a response.

A thoughtful reply was well beyond John. She vacillated for a moment between ‘indeed’ and ‘quite’ and finally decided upon the, given the circumstances, absolutely absurd,

“Just as you say.”

Absurd though it was, it seemed to be the right response, for Sherlock’s expression softened and her posture relaxed. She gave a nod.

John smiled. Sherlock smiled.

And that was that.

John retreated to more solid ground.

“Well, with our golden years settled, how ‘bout I improve the shining hour with supper? I’m starved. Are you certain you don’t want anything, Sherlock?”

Sherlock grunted and hunched over her maps.

John’s eyes fell on the teapot.

“Uh, Sherlock, about this tea…”

“It’s good.”

“Really?”

“Yes, so good that I think I’ll finish the pot whilst you make yourself a Builder’s.”

John looked over her shoulder. Sherlock was smirking.

“Am I that predictable?” asked John.

“Sometimes. About tea and detective fiction, yes, but just when I think I’ve figured you out completely, you surprise me. I never get your limits, John.”

“Well, hurrah for a bit of mystery,” grumbled John as she did, indeed, set about making herself a Builder’s.

* * *

When John opened the refrigerator, she exclaimed, “Is this a sausage I see before me?” Then she called towards the sitting room, “Sherlock, do you fancy some sausages?”

“ _No, John, I do not fancy sausages!_ ”

The words were uttered with such vehemence and disgust that John started and turned around. She met Sherlock’s grey eyes again, and they both burst into schoolgirl giggles.

“Well, well, well,” John said, sniffling and drying her eyes on her sleeve, “I suppose that establishes your position on _sausages_ , Sherlock.”

“Good,” said Sherlock, trying to look solemn and failing as her voice waivered and expression crumpled. “I should hate for there to be any confusion on the subject, John.”

“I happen to like sausages,” said John.

“I know,” quipped Sherlock a bit too quickly.

“I like other things, too!” John protested. “Uh, bacon, ham, kippers…”

“Everything, or so it would seem.” Sherlock cast a Victorian look at John that did, in fact, do rather well by Miss Marple.

“Not quite _everything_ ,” said John, stifling more laughter, “but I’m rather fond of sausages.”

“Then, by all means, do get on with it, John,” barked Sherlock, with mock severity.

John supposed other people didn’t require breakfast meat metaphors to discuss their sexual orientations. “Christ, we’d better retire together. No one else’d have us,” she muttered under her breath.


	5. Chapter 5

 

John turned the book over on the table.

Sherlock said she’d solved it by the end of Chapter Thirteen, and John still hadn’t a clue.

John glanced at her plate and started.

Another mystery.

Where was her tomato?

She hadn’t eaten it. There was still a portion of cold eggs left on the plate. John would never eat the tomato before the eggs, no matter how distracted she’d been by the story, and she _had_ put a tomato on the plate. The sausages were still there, waiting for the tomato.

“Really, John!”

John started again, this time more violently.

Sherlock! Across from John! When had she abandoned her spot at the desk?

“Half an hour ago,” said Sherlock, answering John’s thought, “So I can hardly be accused of sneaking up on you, though I did eat your tomato and two pieces of toast.”

“Why didn’t you just ask?”

“Would you have heard me?”

John shrugged, then nodded toward the book. “You would’ve figured it out by now.”

“Yes.”

“I’m in the dark.”

“Naturally.”

“Well, I’m going to keep on. Would you like the other?” John looked over the counter.

The second tomato was gone!

“I like tomatoes,” said Sherlock.

John smiled. “Noted. Maybe I’ll grow them in the Sussex garden.”

Sherlock’s eyes lit, and John winked before returning to the book.

* * *

John did the washing up and took a cup of tea to her armchair. The rain still droned on against the window. Two cups of tea later, she yawned and moved to the sofa. After a few more chapters, Sherlock’s voice penetrated John’s thoughts.

“John, it’s late. Go to bed.”

John checked her watched.

Two o’clock.

“No. I’m almost at the end. I’ll push on through.”

“Don’t, John. It’s late. You’re tired. You should finish it in daylight, when you’re rested. You’ve nothing on tomorrow...”

“I can’t put it down now!” whined John, aware of how childish she sounded.

Sherlock had never been a mother hen. And who was she to lecture John about staying up past one’s bedtime, she who had once not slept for three days to investigate something about spores?

“That’s the beauty of being an adult, Sherlock! I needn’t hide under the covers with a torch to do my reading!”

“You’re susceptible, John, especially when you’re tired. It’s dark and…”

“Susceptible! What does that mean? Stupid? Ah, I see, it’s _stupid_ to stay up and read a book, but it’s clever to stay up and look at spores.”

“Fine! Don’t go to bed!”

John re-read the last two chapters; more than was enough to get engrossed in the story again and forget all about Sherlock’s bizarre behaviour.

* * *

“Oh, God,” breathed John as she let the book fall from her hand.

“John.”

“Are you trying to kill me, Sherlock?”

“No.”

“That’s what happened in the book. The clever one killed her companion. Gave her a nice birthday and then poisoned her. Because the poor thing was unreliable.”

“You’re reliable, John. I didn’t poison you. I would _never_ poison you.”

John looked blankly about room about as it was draped in darkness, as if all the lights were not on; she spoke as if delivering a monologue, as if there were an audience beyond the footlights, a full crowd, hanging on her every word.

“She made her a special cake. Delicious Death, they called it. Then she killed her. Her friend. Her old school chum. The one who loved her. The one who was devoted to her.” John paused for breath. “You got me a nice fry-up. Was it in the sausages? You don’t eat sausages. I thought we were talking about cock—”

“We _were_ talking about cock,” said Sherlock quickly.

“—but maybe we were talking about poison! Ha, ha! Joke’s on me! You could’ve injected it into the sausages with syringe. I wouldn’t notice. Christ, I didn’t even notice when you ate my tomatoes and toast. Am I a liability, Sherlock?”

“ _This is why I binned that bloody book_!”

* * *

John finally looked Sherlock in the eye.

“I’m nuts, aren’t I?”

Sherlock gave a half-smile. “A bit.”

“It just seems so easy to see.”

“Why is it so easy for you, after reading a single book, to see that I’m trying to kill you when it’s so difficult for you to see, after months of my attempts to convey the notion, far too subtly and somewhat awkwardly, I’ll admit, that I’m in love with you?”

“I don’t know,” said John a bit sheepishly. “Maybe you should’ve left a book of love poems about.”

“I tried that. It didn’t work. You thought it was Mister Hudson’s.”

“Oh, that. Easy mistake.”

“Sapphic odes, John!”

“Christ, I am stupid.”

“A bit.”

“But you didn’t put strychnine in my sausages.”

Sherlock shook her head. “Or cyanide in your coffee. Or arsenic in your tonic.”

“And you are in love with me?”

“Irrevocably.”

“But I thought relationships weren’t your area.”

“So did I. Romance never appealed. It still doesn’t, but...”

John stood up and closed the distance between them.

Their lips met.

John broke away and smiled. “Are you going to tell me how you worked it all out, Sherlock?”

“If you’d like.” Sherlock raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at the stairs that led to John’s bedroom.

“Not most people’s idea of pillow talk, but…”

* * *

“You’re not at all like most people, John.”

“Well, you’re certainly one-of-a-kind, Sherlock. I don’t think that a single of Miss Marple’s famous village parallels apply. But tell me, if I hadn’t brought home this book tonight, would you have carried on in silence, without ever telling me how you felt?”

“No, irrespective of the book, I’d thought to say something tonight. That’s why I got Mister Hudson to buy the things for the fry-up.”

John laughed. “I think a fry-up is rather romantic. Even with the hated sausages.”

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw that book. I thought my plans were foiled once again. You’d be determined to read the whole thing this time and would become so engrossed in the story that once you’d finished it, you’d be looking at me askance for a week. Thankfully, I think the condition is quite temporary.”

“Yes, the fog’s lifted.”

“And you will come to Sussex? And grow tomatoes?”

“No place else I’d rather be: with you and your bees.”

“Now that _is_ romantic. But what are you going to do with that book?”

“Bin it. As much as I’d like a reminder of the day you finally got your message through my thick skull…” John shook her head.

“There’s always the barometer,” mused Sherlock.

“That’s enough. Let’s go to bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
